


Get Outta My Dreams

by Ailorian



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 80s themed soundtrack, Basically music makes him existential, Day-Dreaming, Dissociation, M/M, Oops, Richie's Attention Span, Titles Are Suggested Listening, Until it isn't, What is reality anyway, sorta - Freeform, tell me if I should add tags idk, wet dreams, zero consequences experimentation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-15 07:09:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15407694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailorian/pseuds/Ailorian
Summary: two parter - second half is....explicit.





	1. I Think We're Alone Now - Tiffany

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quixoticquest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticquest/gifts).



“...theorizes that we can’t imagine faces that we have never seen before, even subconsciously. So, even if you don’t recognize someone in your dreams, you  _ must _ have seen them before. Even just a gla--” 

Richie let his bottom jaw fall open around what might have been a yawn or a whale noise - a gusty sigh made of exhaustion and impatience and sixty to the fourteenth power absence of interest in every word that was tumbling out of Ben’s mouth like a deluge on a sheer cliff face. The second easiest way to shut his dorm-mate up without physically assaulting him. 

His gentle and non harmful silencing technique was answered with the thump of a small square pillow - actually, too hard to be a pillow,  _ a fucking brick _ that the dirty blond had been compressing into a proper solid for the better part of the winter between the steel beam that had become his ass and the wood frame of his desk chair - against the back of his head. 

The motion necessary to catch the damn thing, twist in his seat, and whip it back toward its original handler was at once a quick, smooth, and thrashing endeavor, which only failed to land its mark because the door to their room was  _ just fucking fat enough _ to knock the damn pillow off course as it swung open. Richie’s only consolation was that Ben had turned toward him enough to take the door to his kneecap and socked toes, hissing in a groan before as he clutched at the closer of the two, dropping his head against the desk in front of him. 

“Intruders!” the brunet shouted, hands raised over his head while Bev gasped her concern - at the pained noise, clearly - gripping the door to tip herself around it in search of injury. The bow of her pretty little rear in ragged-edged shorts couldn’t quite keep his chin from tipping up, vision bowled and magnified by the heavy frames trying to slip off the bump of his nose again, to find a withering glare from their resident  _ Munchkinland  _ Ambassador. 

“Whassup, Lollipop Guild?” Richie asked, his voice skirting higher into a mockingly sweet tone as he aimed around the break where his shift from walking fetus to actual grown-ass man was still catching on his newly emerging Adam’s apple. 

“Shut up,” Eddie answered, short and sweet and audibly exhausted as his back pack slipped off narrow shoulders and was immediately dropped onto the brunet’s desk with all the dismissive alacrity of a lumberjack defeated in battle by the beaver. 

“Doesn’t look too bad, do you want some ice?” Bev asked, while Ben tried resolutely to pretend he wasn’t trying really hard not to cry. 

“Did you bring the crACK COCAINE I ASKED Ff--” Raising his voice was enough to have the sapling tree excuse for a friend slapping both hands over Richie’s mouth, even as he leaned back in his seat to avoid it. As Eddie lost his balance, though, he shoved backwards, reaching out to slap the snickering brunet’s shoulder before he moved to close the door - as if that paper mache piece of shit was going to stop anyone in the hall from hearing. 

“Can you just fucking not?” Eddie demanded, shoving Richie’s textbook and binder out of the way of his own things (like he owned the desk) as his backpack was emptied and dropped to the floor before finally turning to plop his ass at the end of Ben’s bed. It left him within arm’s reach (and kicking distance) of the trashmouth’s desk, but that didn’t stop him from noting the fact that his own bed was right behind him and definitely more comfortable. 

“Dunno,” Richie answered, brows flicking up as quickly and violently as his shoulders did, the shrug rolling into a flop of his arms as he sat more forward and straight in his chair, only to slump toward Eddie’s crossed legged perch where the aluminum bed frame pressed snugly against his desk, fist against his chin before a single finger unfurled and pressed coyly against the corner of his smirking mouth. 

“You gonna teach me how, stud?” earned him yet another pillow to the head. 

The best part of studying with the same six people every day was that it made it really easy to afford pizza the entire time. Except Fridays, since Stan was still making that hour-drive home to help his Dad with  _ Shabbat _ \- which was as good a time as any to break out the bacon or shrimp (as if they had very much of either). 

The worst part of studying with the same six people every day was that they ran out of the small talk chit-chat how was your day shit way too fucking soon and then  _ actually  _ had to study. Though that could just as easily be attributed to the ultimate power-up knock-out combo of Ben’s nerd excitement and Eddie’s resolute, impatient focus. There was just something about those smoldering chocolate eyes that screamed  _ I’ll replace you with an Asian exchange student so fast your head will spin _ . 

“Children, behave,” Bev must have said at some point, earning those grateful looks from Bill who wanted to chastise them just about as often. Smirking around his bite of pepperoni, Richie dragged a tally down his imagined chalkboard, growing ever closer to a defensible “Yes, daddy,” or “Sorry, mommy.” 

Not that any defense could stand against the dreaded  _ beep beep _ . 

“That’s what they say when we’re together,” Richie tacked on, his voice just barely sing-song following the melody of some half remembered pop song. Eddie’s eyes darted up toward him as he leaned forward, glaring through brows that hadn’t moved anymore than the rest of him, bowed over the desk and his own folded legs. Leaning back, Richie lifted a fist to his mouth like a microphone, letting his desk chair catch him as he fell dramatically, head tipped back to add, “And watch how  _ you play _ !” 

Watching the grit of the munchkin’s teeth clamp down on a mostly-dried crust that hadn’t even been dipped in anything resembling a sauce was all the proof Richie needed that the universe thought it was fucking funny - stealing his carefully wrought and maintained attention span and smashing it against the smooth curve of a sharpening jawline and the press and stretch of thin, pink lips, rubbed raw along the edges by Eddie’s rapid fire speech patterns and nervous habits. 

Moments like this were the reason he had gotten into the habit of announcing expletives, breaking silences and awkward pauses open like a fucking geode as if such an escape needed to be justified by a result. The scratch of a half dozen ball point pens falling under the echo of his own pulse pattering against the inside of his ear as if someone was trying to play a set of organ pipes like a drum kit was enough to choke the silence but it took the overlap of a snare drum and cymbal for him to wonder who had music playing. 

“I think we’re alone, now,” Eddie murmured, whisper-soft despite the absolute lack of his usual hesitance - a question mark hanging onto thin air like its life depended on it. Which, it might, if there weren’t a hundred thousand more useful sentences to cling to, but then, could Richie really blame them for picking those ones? There probably wasn’t a definition for hypocrite in the dictionary anymore. Just a sad black and white portrait of himself pushing frames up his face.

“ _ Doesn’t seem to be anyone around _ .”  

That noise was creeping up on him still, like water rising, Richie could feel it in his shoes. Which he should have taken off when he got home - it was as close to “trying to keep things clean” as he and Ben ever got most days. Wriggling his toes was out of the question though, especially with Eddie tipping his head up a bit, gaze sidelong, mouth pressed into a thin line where it wasn’t squished to the side by the capped end of his pen. 

“Let me hear your heart beat,” the smaller brunet murmured, and Richie felt his eyes widen, hyper focused on the lilt to a voice that had been speaking just a moment ago. The normal pentameter and variance in pitch that indicated speech had been just barely wavered, its rhythm failing to uphold the last dregs of anything but a sing-song whisper that distracted him long enough for Eddie to be pressing his shoulders flat - tipping his swivel desk chair back just enough to have Richie gripping it by the arms to keep his balance despite the absolute lack of room to fall. 

It wasn’t Eddie’s voice that echoed the not-quite verbatim phrases that joined his paltry excuse for a chorus line a moment later. There had to be a radio in here somewhere, tucked under one of the sleeping - unmoving, sleeping?  _ sleeping _ \- bodies that had all but faded into the mounds of clothes and shoes and some sports gear that Richie didn’t believe for a moment Ben was going to stick with, and that was before glancing at the schedule to which he had subjected himself. Shadows in a room that gasped for light the way fish gasped for water. 

_ Let me feel your heart beat _ , Eddie’s hand flattened against him instead, sliding down his chest even as the wheezing hypochondriac (who really just needed to stop hyperventilating every time his thoughts got too fast) glided forward. Knees tightened to either side of his thighs, squeezing Richie’s legs together and scrunching the fold of his jeans enough to almost threaten him with a painful pinch but maybe that was because his entire shaft was pressed against the zipper already, teeth parting around a question or a choked laugh only to fall wind-less-silent the moment the soft, warm pad of Eddie’s thumb pressed over the gap between his lips. 

_ Let me touch your heart beat _ . Those drums were getting louder. Richie tried to look around, ribs vibrating with the force. He could feel his pulse under his tongue and in the hollow of his throat and literally everywhere that his friend’s body touched his. Something was escalating, tangible enough to have the hair on his nape and arms standing at attention but nowhere fucking near what it took to draw his gaze away from the softening of burnt amber eyes, the anxious rolling of a small mouth against unforgiving teeth, the tilt of Eddie’s head as he leaned forward. 

Richie felt his arms rise, circling around a small, firm waist as he shot up from the chair. Escape? Stop? Trying to get away, into the night. He couldn’t fathom what thought caused it, but he knew moments later that he was running just as fast as they can, Eddie hand in his as the shorter brunet whipped-twisted out of his grip like an unfurling flag in the wind. The snap of his loose hems closer to a stumble and yell. It didn’t take long for both of them to go toppling to the ground, rolling and rolling down a hill that couldn’t quite decide to just chill the fuck out. That escalating sensation had reached his gut by now, legs numbed and full of static as cool grass tried to steal the rising heat that managed to boil over, a screeching kettle whistle sounding on all sides despite the stammer of the drums in his chest as Eddie landed atop him. 

“I think we’re alone, now,” that whisper soft voice said again. Some tense, ever fearful and generally  _ willfully repressed _ portion of his mind was searching every syllable for a hint of a different voice entirely, but there was only Eddie. Soft, hesitant, pressing himself up enough to gaze down at Richie while his head lolled uselessly in the grass, wide eyes bowed by the curve of his spectacles - which darkened as Eddie leaned down. 

Silence surrounded them, absent of insects and winds, with only the beating of their hearts to break it, barely visible in the hollow of Eddie’s throat, and tangible everywhere that their bodies touched.  _ Can you feel my heart beat can you feel my heart beat can you feel my heart -- _

“Dude!” Eddie’s whispered shout startled Richie upright, his movement swift and uncontrolled enough to have the other hauling backwards to avoid getting cracked in the face with a mouth full of skull. 

“Shit, what the fuck?” No cool grass, no warm body against his. Most of the shadowed mounds had vanished as his gaze flicked around him. 

“Get in bed, jackass,” the other answered, pulling his backpack up over his shoulders while Bill loomed behind him, shoving his feet into his shoes. The hall light was enough to illuminate the whole cubby hole excuse for a bedroom, and the lump on Ben’s bed could only be one of like two things. 

“Are you comin, Eds?” Richie asked, the tilt of his mouth and head coquettish even as Eddie rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, small pink mouth bowing around a huffed sigh. 

“No, I’m goin, and don’t call me Eds.” Succinct and firm, the shorter brunet turned on a heel, stalking out the door. A wave and a smile preceded Bill’s disappearance as well, the claw of stark white light shrinking into a thin line before it disappeared entirely. 


	2. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go - Wham!

“Need anything from the corner store?” Richie asked, dropping his ass onto his bed long enough to pull on his shoes, since the laces were too fucking tight all of the sudden to just shove toes-first into them. Ben’s mumbled reply was closer to fuck off than it was a real answer, so the brunet shrugged, huffing as he stood again and pulled the door open. 

“Get me some earplugs,” the grumbling mound of pillows and used tissues managed to call after him, stopping Richie short on strolling down the hall. Ben rolled onto his back, eyes pinched against the stark light of the hall, which gave him much more of a chipmunk glaring look than usual. “If you’re gonna keep humming.” 

“I’m not humming,” Richie snapped in reply - not quite so accustomed to accusations that he couldn’t be defensive at the first sign of one that didn’t actually have a leg to stand on. Of all the things to care about in that moment, though, that was probably the farthest from useful, but knowing that didn’t stop the brunet from posing in the open doorway with his arms akimbo, as if such a stance could needle a(n unnecessary) apology from his dorm mate. 

“You were humming  _ all night _ ,” Ben argued, rolling back toward the wall like an exhausted giant trying to return to his pre-beanstalk lifestyle. A sharp  _ tch  _ preceded Richie’s departure, the door falling closed behind him as his hands burrowed into his jacket pockets. 

Quick footing down the fire escape steps took him to the back alley and out onto the main street faster than the front entrance would ever manage, and the slap of Richie’s already slightly too-small converse was almost enough to have him snapping his fingers as he made his way between bins and fire escapes, stirred to rhythm by the faint memory of some gangster musical. It only took the smack of trash can lid against the concrete - knock by a startled cat or something - like a cymbal to have the brunet side-sliding a few paces, arms in the air and fingers splayed for flair, a familiar melody emerging wordlessly from his nose. 

Well, shit, now Ben had fucking jinxed him. 

_ Goes bang bang bang til my feet do the same _ . 

“You were s’pose to  _ wake me up _ !” Eddie nearly yelled, breathing a bit hard as he came shoulder to - well, elbow - with Richie. The taller brunet nearly leaped out of his own skin, head whipping to the side (as much to locate Eddie as it was to chase the echo of  _ go, go _ that surrounded them) while his shoulders cinched up like he could protect his vital bits with the ham bones he called arms, wondering briefly where the fuck the ferret had crawled out of - though a glance around only managed to tell him that he must have zoned out on his walk. Was this even the right direction? 

“For what?” he asked, utterly dumbfounded. Sure, that bittersweet (more like damp earth) bundled herb came with six thousand memory and attention span warnings and a  _ nah man, it’s cool _ to counter each one, but Richie wasn’t expecting to lose something as finite as a to-do list. He was only going to the store because he had nothing better to do today (well, and should have gotten a new razor weeks ago, if the angry red bumps lining his chin were anything to go by). 

“Makes me crazy when you act so cruel,” Eddie answered, defeated and disappointed in ways that managed to silence anything Richie might have managed to formulate in his defense - not that he could, with abso-fucking-lutely nothing to go on, but thus was life. 

“Jeeze, Eds, ease up. You gotta chill pill in that fanny pack?” 

“Yeah, it’s called,  _ shut the fuck up, Richie _ .”    


“Aw, come on baby, let’s not fight,” the brunet answered, not quite sure what he was doing as a hand emerged from his pockets to take Eddie’s. “We’ll go dancing, and everything will be alright.” Turning, he moved backwards, feeling just a bit weightless while their arms stretched between them, chocolate eyes glimmering like waxed mahogany as the shadows of the buildings around them broke around open sunshine. He almost missed the extended tones that held his mouth open, the pitter-pattering of his pulse that made his steps sound more rhythmic than usual. 

There was a disconnect, somewhere, between his head and his - well the rest, probably. Richie stared, as enthralled as he was confused by the look on his friend’s face as he marched them down the sidewalk, walking backwards with Eddie trailing like the bait on a hook. Turned a mere spark into a flame - one that the taller brunet could feel on his cheeks and chest, even two arms’ lengths away. A flush crept into cheeks that were just starting to sharpen out of that youthful roundness, pink lips parted around a surprised breath as Richie tightened his grip, elbow bending to pull the other against him, arms folding around him. 

This time, his lips made contact. Richie’s eyes fell shut, enclosed entirely in darkness as a soft mouth moved against his, the taste of toothpaste and cherries (actually, red starburst, his absent thoughts provided) consumed him more than he would ever be able to consume them back. Heat curled against him from collarbone to ankles, his arm tight around a firm but forgiving body as he cinched Eddie up toward him, head bowed over an up-tipped chin. 

Rolling, the taller brunet pressed the other back, down, into soft sheets and a creaking bed that was more slinky than haunted staircase. Ardent gasps filled the space between them when he leaned back enough to breathe for a moment, sucking in a bit of cool oxygen before diving back down. His knee shifted between warm thighs, pressing higher until a jolt from the body beneath him shook them both. 

_ Wake me up, before you go, go. Wake up. Go, go.  _

“Jus gonna go, without you, alone, if you don’t wake up,” a loud but far from yelling warning tone drew him about as gently as a catfisher dragged a thumbed lip out of the river bed, and a mumbled question mark fell out of him before his lashes managed to break apart from the sandy glue that was holding them together. . 

“I said, do you want anything from the corner store?” Ben asked, and Richie blinked at the ninety degree turn of the world before he realized enough to lift his head up, fighting gravity and God just to get an elbow under him for support. 

“I was jus--” the brunet started, glancing down to find himself still in his pajamas - well, lack of pajamas. “Jesus, Fuck!" 

“It’s pronounced  _ Christ _ ,” Ben countered, and the door bumped pointedly behind him. 


	3. Lucidity (Non-Song Chapter)

“Heh, Eds,” Richie murmured, voice quiet only because he was laying on his back and the rare peaceful moment on the quad lawn made it unnecessary to go full-ham on his exhale. Despite being less than his own body-length away from his intended audience, there was no answering inquiry noise - not even a turn of the chestnut head, tipped forward over another text book despite being free for the afternoon - and the brunet had to resist dropping his bent knee just to unbalance Eddie, who had been leaning against the bow of his calf and thigh for the better part of an hour now. 

“ _ Eds _ !” 

“Don’t call me Eds,” he finally answered and Richie did sit up then, both of his knees dropping to the side just in time to put his friend off balance, their faces looming dangerously (tauntingly) close together as the shorter man whipped his head to the side, catching himself on one hand so that he could glare pointedly from a few inches below Richie’s eye level. Far from intimidated by gleaming amber-speckled eyes, Richie beamed, holding up Bev’s borrowed notes like a shield before his finger curled around the wire-wrap of the notebook to tap pointedly at the barely-legible word. 

“Lucky tiddy,” the trashmouth murmured, like a conspiracy, like a secret - his own barely contained laughter caught in a tightened throat while his forehead reddened with the efforts of restraining himself. Eddie’s gaze darted down and up again, an impatient sigh escaping him as he pushed himself upright - leaned forward over crossed legs now that Richie wasn’t supporting his back. 

“Lucidity,” the nerd corrected him pointedly, earning a scoff as Richie turned the notebook to face himself again, utterly incredulous that the spelling he was staring at would elicit such a pronunciation. 

“Lucid titty, that’s a dumb word,” he murmured, unexpectedly disappointed. 

“Loo-sid-it-tee,” Eddie enunciated, his teeth and lips clicking and curling around every syllable with the vigor of a short-fused language pathologist while he carefully refused to look back at the bored jackass. At that point, the only way to get Eddie to pay attention to him was to surrender to the more delicate language of weirdos who like to know stuff - which Richie had been practicing on Ben since their first semester together. There was only so much a man could handle at once. 

“What’s it mean?” he asked, knowing that no one could resist demonstrating the fact that they were smarter and more well informed than someone else. Eddie, bless him, still managed to sound put upon as he sighed again, textbook dropping flat into the fold of his legs, as he finally returned those cinnamon hickory irises to Richie’s face. 

“It means consciousness, awareness of self, clarity of expression.” A blank stare answered the  _ probably plucked right from last week’s vocabulary assignment _ response, before Richie let one brow crawl slowly higher, lips thinning to a confused moue. The longer he didn’t get it, the longer Eddie didn’t return to his reading. 

“Easy to understand? Coherent? Comprehensible? Do you even speak English?” 

“Perdona mi ignorancia, papi,” Richie murmured in a purr, more flirtation than fear as he pressed a hand to his chest, taking Eddie’s hand up to clutch it toward him in a pleading pose. It was ripped away a moment later, an elbow knocking against his knee as Eddie twisted with the force of his movement. 

“Ironic, that you’re having so much trouble comprehending a word that means comprehensible,” he muttered, almost managing to sound wry or amused. A pause preceded his continuance, which Richie waited for only because the point was to get Eddie talking rather than storming off because the trashmouth had suddenly become insufferable. 

“You know how Ben was talking about lucid dreams?” he asked, and Richie shrugged - because, frankly, he didn’t remember that, but Ben said so many things, he could hardly be blamed for not keeping track. He didn’t have the binder full of lists, facts, and figgers that Stan (well actually most of his friends now, considering the notes organization epidemic that was spreading faster than aids) was always toting around. 

“Normal dreams, you don’t know that you’re dreaming til you wake up. Lucid dream means that you know you’re dreaming. That kind of awareness. It just means thinking clearly.  _ Compos mentis _ .” That must have been the end of that particular rope for Eddie’s patience, since his attention turned toward the textbook again, and Richie lifted his knee back into place just for the sake of having the warmth of his friend’s shoulders pressed against it - though it took a moment, and a pointed, threatening, suspicious glare, for Eddie to believe that he was going to leave it there enough to lean back again. 

“You’re so cute when you speak dead languages, Eds,” Richie murmured, and sprawled backwards across the blanket just in time to dodge the swing of his friend’s flailing hand. 

Staring up at the wall of blue that stretched infinitely beyond the budding canopies of mid-spring, he tried not to wonder too hard about dreams being the example Eddie used. After all, there was no way that the high-strung hypochondriac could know that Richie was recently waking up hard and sweaty from dreams that involved a lot more physical contact than the slightly damp, bumpy ridge of a spine through thick cotton that was currently pressed off-center against the bent angle of his leg. Eddie wouldn’t even share a water bottle without wiping something off but that wasn’t stopping Richie’s imagination from delving tongue first into his face (and other places) almost every night. 

Waking up had never been so weird before, but then, it was a lot easier to dismiss a ridiculous dream than it was to wake up from something that felt painfully, deliciously, tantalizingly, devastatingly real. Made real feel really fucking awful by comparison. 

Maybe he just wanted it to feel real.


	4. Funky Town - Lipps Inc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two parter - second half is.... 
> 
> explicit.

“Columbia College accepted my undergrad application,” Beverly announced, a bit unprompted, though hardly anyone was really surprised - the ginger had been worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and glancing surreptitiously at all of them since she showed up, and Richie was just relieved that the anticipation ice mixed with this-totally-isn’t-awkward silence had been broken,  _ finally _ . 

“Th-at’s awesome,” Bill answered in the ringing hush that followed, with everyone trying not to inhale too quickly. A set of seven idiots who hadn’t been apart long enough to make any other friends since grade school was poised on the edge of a precipice, torn between the shock of realization that accompanied their immediate knowledge of Columbia’s location (and Beverly’s ambition), and the ever-present threat of separation that had been looming closer and closer since they got their Diplomas. One couldn’t exactly start screaming  _ Don’t Leave Me _ when one was also trying to be happy for their friend. How Bill managed to be so casually excited by something that should have devastated someone who had been pining after one of their own best friends for the majority of their conscious and sentient time spent on earth, the trashmouth would never know.

Frankly, it was a blessing he was already sitting, since that made it easier to resist the  _ run the fuck away _ impulses that had his shoes twitching at the end of his legs. 

“So, you’re moving?” Ben asked, doing his best version of happy-for-you voice while swallowing his own rising nerves. Richie would have punched him if he could reach, but only because seeing  _ that  _ in his dorm mate and friend’s face made him worry that  _ that  _ was stupid obvious in his own, too. Which was more than he could handle, especially with Eddie’s kneecap mere inches from his head while he leaned back against the garden wall that spaghetti-man was using as a chair and desk. 

“We’re all going to leave, eventually,” Stan mused monotonously, not bothering to look up from his binder-of-all-things and his wriggling red pencil. Because of course edits had to be erasable. 

“Dunno about that,” Mike muttered, nudging the grumpy-gus as he changed positions, pulling one leg up in front of him on the cinderblock wall. The nook where they had taken up their collective perch was half damp greenery and half concrete monstrosity, with plenty of modern-art angles and smooth edges to sit in, lean against, lounge around, drape across, and climb on however they pleased. From his seat on the ground, arms crossed over his chest and head tipped back while he contemplated the risk versus reward of pressing his lips against the soft skin at the joint of Eddie’s knee, Richie saw mostly legs (and butts) just dangling, but he knew enough about the tones of these voices to guess facial expressions too. 

“D-d-iid you get that grant-t you applied for?” Bill asked, drawing their collective attention back to the topic at hand - or at least, the part he wanted to hear about. The part that was about Beverly. As if they had all managed to grow entirely out of that star-struck discernment that  _ a girl had joined them _ , on purpose, of her own free will, with no noticeable underlying ulterior motives. 

To be fair, Richie thought, most of them  _ had _ . Mostly because being a girl didn’t actually make her anymore exciting, strange, or exotic than any of them. Breasts could be fun but they were basically just squishier. Now if only Ben or Bill (or hell, both - Bev was probably the right kinds of wild and chill) would grow enough balls to give her the  _ I want more _ speech from the end of every tear-jerking chick flick released this decade. Maybe then he could stop bitterly comparing their longing and barely disguised doting to his own aimless spiral toward the destruction and loss of everything he had managed to hold dear in this lifetime. 

“Still waiting to hear back,” Bev answered with a nervous smile, her eyes widening with amused intensity for a moment as her lips stretched and twisted with uncertainty around clenched teeth. 

“I’m sure you’ll get it,” Ben mentioned, his smile shy when dark and bespectacled eyes cast toward him, half sneering - as if Richie had any reason to be jealous just because his friends were allowed to smile and stare wistfully at the non-object of their own affections. 

“Thanks,” Bev murmured, turning toward Stan a moment later - apparently finished with her time in the spotlight. “What about that internship interview you had? Wasn’t that this weekend?” she asked, prodding the curly haired nerd in the side when he didn’t react right away, already sucked back into his studying and editing. 

“Yeah, it went well,” Stan answered, calm and matter of fact considering he was sharing news whose expectation had been crippling him with anxiety when it wasn’t turning him into a micro-hulk (sans-muscles, obviously) with every mention for the last two months. Bev’s hands clapped together as she grinned, tucking them under her chin a moment later while the others congratulated him. A few spatterings of applause went around, with Ben tapping his big zip-up binder like a bongo for a moment, like proper clapping was overkill. 

“I’ll be heading to Atlanta for the summer,” their resident ass-stick hoarder continued, resting his elbows while his eyes dipped a bit shyly, or maybe nervously, searching middle space for answers that conscious reality couldn’t offer yet. “They mentioned tuition assistance for relocating as well, so I’ll have to consider whether to finish off down there. Can’t really pass off a chance to get in the front door, but their demand might wax and wane a bit in between.” 

“Gotta make those millions, huh?” Richie clucked, lifting his hand to rub his thumb and fingers together while Stan cast him a dry look. 

“Gotta make a move for a town that’s right for me,” Stan answered, his expression unchanging from it’s all-serious-all-the-fucking-time look despite the lilt in his voice that was much more like a melody than a speech pattern. “Town to keep me movin’.” 

“Keep me movin’ with some energy,” Bev agreed, fists in the air as she danced a bit in her seat, but it took Eddie mimicking her movements - hips and shoulders tipping side to side, head bobbing - for Richie to zero in on what was happening. That strange separation sensation was back, and that far distant beeping that had been dismissed as sirens or traffic became more prevalent, morphing seamlessly into a melody he didn’t realize he had been ignoring. Or missing. 

This was what he had been waiting for, and yet it was terror that gripped him as Richie pushed to his feet, glancing intently around. Stealing Ben’s big-book-o-dreams for a few nights of the-homework-can-wait (his favorite game) wasn’t going to do him any good if this was actually a premature second coming that no mortal soul was happily anticipating. 

No red balloon. Thank universe-puking turtle gods everywhere. No varsity jacket werewolf, no dancing clown. Turning slowly in place, Richie’s eye darted around every iota of detail he could rest on long enough to come into something resembling focus (not always possible with the fit of his spectacles over the bridge of his nose), feeling like he had been banished to the back row of  _ Aladdin's _ theater. He had mistaken a dangerous reality for a dream before, dismissed it and all it threatened with a wave of his smugly confident hand, and wasn’t about to make that mistake twice. Last time, the only consequence was dying a horrible death at the hands of a fear slurping ungod with a thing for kids and a vendetta against the losers. 

This time, if he fucked up, - let himself believe (or disbelieve) - he could lose Eddie forever.

Maybe not in the sobbing beside a casket at church kinda way but definitely in the he’s still on this earth and just doesn’t want to be in the same room kinda way and Richie was pretty sure that he would actually rather be the one to die than either of those scenarios. 

Which is why he had oh so cleverly selected the one thing that It could never use to frighten him as his lucid dreaming trigger. Wake-up-back-to-bed method had been annoying and pretty hard - and was clearly starting to get on Ben’s nerves (his own fault really since Richie had asked about external stimulus and was told to fuck himself) - but here they were. 

The twenty eight inch  _ Schwinn  _ glinted at him, in all its faded glory, from just across the walkway - perched on its rusting kickstand, name still glinting where it was etched lovingly into the stainless steel frame.  _ Gotta move on _ echoed behind him like a distant choir, or maybe a whisper considering how the words curled up his spine, setting his hair on end and his blood to rushing - though that was just as likely the swell of anticipation that was threatening to steal the breath right from his lungs. 

Couldn’t get too excited, Richie reminded himself, not at all interested in getting his heart rate up enough to startle himself awake the first time this actually worked. Being conscious of the fact that he was in bed right now, probably curled on his side with the blankets pulled up to his chin was stakes enough against his favor - no need to invite more. This was a manipulation of the mind he was dealing with here. 

_ Talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, _ drew him back toward his friends, poised as they were in their spots like he hadn’t moved at all - though they had turned to look at him. If it weren’t the off-tempo head bobbing that they couldn’t even manage to do simultaneously, Richie might be nervous that he was the only one hearing the music, though that hardly mattered when the venue was his own half-cognizant imagination. Six sets of eyes, not quite in focus, though he knew each and every color as well as the curve of cheekbones and brows, could barely see the wisps of hair that blew across Bev’s face - and Bill’s. They all adjusted their seats as he moved forward, the center of his own focus standing as he got nearer. 

“Won’t you take me to,” Eddie murmured into the wellspring of rhythm and melody that had become the air around them, and Richie had to bite back a groan, resisted the roll of his eyes as his hands lifted to cup the soft curves of his friend’s jaw and cheeks. Why all of his dreams had to have a cheesy soundtrack where half the cast was singing along like a  _ Broadway  _ snoozical, he had no idea. Maybe he should stop falling asleep with the radio on, like Ben asked. 

“Watch me,” Richie whispered, forcefully insistent and breathless at once, his thumbs pressing into soft skin before he brushed them alone the swell of high cheekbones. Dark eyes met his, as honeyed chocolate brown as ever, crystalline in their clarity. He knew every fractum and brush stroke, could imagine the void of bottomless pupils swallowing the colors one tendril at a time as pink lips parted around an anticipatory breath.  

Richie could feel the others’ eyes on them -  _ him _ . Their gazes blazed across his skin like a hot iron looming closer, aiming to plant its permanence with all the searing rage and hunger that glowing steel can offer but not quite certain of its target, of its precision, of its accuracy. It was enough anticipation to set his blood to boiling, flushed anywhere the air could touch him. Pin points of attention that he was as guilty of as he was subjected to them. 

“Eds, look at me.” Nothing else. No one else. In the whole fucking world. 

Just them, just this, just right now. Where it doesn’t matter if his longing and affection are returned or accepted or disdained - because, technically, he hasn’t offered. Just the semi-conscious objectification of his ill-conceived crush amongst his closest (and only) friends, safe within the confines of his rapid-eye-movement-deep sleeping mind. His grip on Eddie’s face tightened, squishing his cheeks just enough to have his mouth puckering, teeth parting around a noise that could be anything if it had been given a chance to escape those soft, shining lips before the self indulgent, overzealous, doesn’t know the meaning of moderation trashmouth was covering them with his own instead.


	5. Funky Town - Psuedo Echo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #explicit   
> richie shows signs of voyeurism 
> 
> dream rules but let me know if i should tag warnings

Eddie was as soft as Richie imagined ( _ knew _ , really, considering how often he could get away with touching the hypochondriatic clean freak). They slid against each other easily, mouths slick with their own spit already and utterly shameless in sharing it - he tasted like sweet tea and lemon drops. Eddie parted beneath him like automated doors, unflinching in his yield as Richie pressed him, arms around a small waist, back against that concrete wall, half bowed over him (zippers pressed snugly together) by the time the shorter brunet’s shoulders touched any of the decorate flora that was planted there. 

They all watched. Not with any sort of interest or fascination. Gargoyles at the top of a castle staring down with blank stone eyes at any passersby, watching the moat when nothing else was available. Richie probably could have made them leave - just speaking up might be enough to trick his brain into accepting that narrative - but he didn’t exactly want them gone either. Their friends sat in his peripheral attentions, eyes on them (seeing or unseeing, it almost didn’t matter). It was as close to witnesses as he was ever gonna get. 

And they were going to  _ watch _ , Richie thought, lifting his head just long enough to inhale before he dove lower, nipping and licking at the soft skin of Eddie’s jaw - pulled taut over a sharpening line in a maturing face that he had known, watched, admired for far too long. The warm body against his seemed to melt, loose and soft and all but draped over the sharp angles of his own body. Eddie sank into him like powdered chocolate in boiling water. He could feel hands, smaller than his - always smaller - at the waistband of his shorts, unmoving but not unresponsive. Should he be able to guess what Eddie would do in a moment like this? Should it just follow what he wanted? What was the point of a fantasy that didn’t follow the desires anyway? 

Worrying a love bite into the flesh of Eddie’s throat, Richie tried to push the concerns from his mind. It wasn’t worth the risk of waking up to soon - though there wasn’t all that much to lose if he did, either. Except maybe sleep. Remembering that he could try again certainly put him at ease, enough - at least - to focus on shifting his knee between creamy thighs, sifting those damn shorts higher and higher. The faded line between where the sun shone and where it didn’t was visible as he glanced down, just to watch his own hand cover those miles of smooth skin, dusted with hair far blonder than the chestnut swoop between Eddie’s ears. 

“God, fuck, you’re pretty,” Richie whispered, mouth half pressed against the shorter brunet’s while his hand shifted toward the elastic waistband instead - sliding, pushing, nudging down until a cloying heat enveloped him, bumping dangerously between various mounds of flesh. His other hand clutched Eddie against him, kept them pressed from knocking knees to belly buttons, where they separated only enough to have their lips aligned instead, the bow of Richie’s shoulders drawn taut and forward, as if to encase them in a private little bubble. 

“Won’t you take me to--” That god-awful song was still playing, echoing around them as if on loop (though really, did he even know all of the words?) but nothing was worse than it coming out of Eddie’s mouth - as if he needed a reason to remember that this wasn’t real. The _ point  _ was that it wasn’t real. 

“Yeah, I’m gonna,” he murmured, hoping that this wasn’t actually his best attempt at pillow-talk. 

Without overthinking it, Richie reached up to cup his hand across Eddie’s mouth. The shorter brunet’s head tipped further back, leaving a long column of flawless milk-white skin for him to descend upon - and the trashmouth had no intention of leaving it so beautifully unmarred. Sucking a marbled trail of pink and purple down the length of the exposed throat, he set his teeth against the curve of Eddie’s collarbone as soon as he reached it, dragging gray cotton out of the way before leaning back enough to strip him of the garment entirely, and the thing vanished more than it was truly discarded. 

Richie pressed forward again until Eddie was laid out properly, pillowed and haloed by short green fronds dotted with colorful flowers that weren’t in high enough resolution to register a recognition of species. With their hips slotted together, Richie sat upright for a moment, standing before a concrete altar while their friends surrounded them like watchful guards - turned inward as spectators instead of checking their surroundings. Tempting as it was to meet their gazes, to grin and beam and flick his brows in smug, boasting acknowledgement of what was happening, he knew it would be empty. Worse than empty. 

His hands flattened against that bared chest, ruddy nipples and the bump of ribs the closest thing to texture as he skimmed soft flesh. A crook and curl of his fingertips left soft pink trails before he dipped once more below the elastic waistband and pulled. 

Eddie’s cock was soft pink and moonlight pale, nestled almost delicately in a bed of carefully trimmed (no doubt for cleanliness reasons and nothing to do with fuck-buddy manners or intended attraction of sexual partners) hair just a shade or two lighter than the crop of chestnut locks that fell haphazardly across his forehead. 

Richie had seen it before - it didn’t take more than a year of phys-ed together to accomplish that, really, even with Eddie being on and off paranoid or too self conscious to indulge a shower until everyone had left (the only acceptable reason to be late for class, apparently, at least by Kaspbrak standards) - but there was certainly something to be said for the piston-straight shaft swollen enough to mark the vein running up the underside, the bulbous curve of the flared mushroom cap head. The bead of clear liquid at the top may just be his own ego, if the dreaming trashmouth was perfectly honest with himself (which is sorta what he was trying not to be, at the moment). 

Kneeling down, Richie ran his tongue along the shaft, velvet skin slicked by the swipe of his mouth. The others seemed to bow forward, curling tighter around them - and if they were tall enough, it might have managed to blot out the sky above them. Part of him was glad they weren’t -couldn’t- considering how gorgeous Eddie looked in the warm sunlight. He tasted just like he smelled, if a bit thicker, richer. Burying his face in sparse, tawny hair, Richie breathed deep, lips and tongue never still as he sought to elicit something in spaghetti-man’s voice besides that damn song. Eddie writhed in his grip, trembling and shaking apart like a jenga tower on a cargo train, even as long fingers flattened against narrow hips and a soft stomach to hold him still. 

“Won’t you take me to--” Eddie murmur-hummed again, and Richie had to bite back an impatient huff, scoff, or otherwise displeased noise. Focusing on the body in his grip wasn’t working as well as he hoped, not when everything from the angle of the shoulders and heads around them, the placement of Bev’s hand, his own breathing, and that fucking song, spiraled around him in sensorial mockery of his actual wants. 

“I’m gonna,” he bit out again, standing as he took Eddie by the arm and hauled him upright, only to press him back down the other way, face first into the flora and nothing between the trashmouth and a bared ass as he yanked that elastic waistband all the way to white-socked ankles. A curious finger slid over and then into the hot, puckered, vice-grip of an orifice without resistance (something that Richie was almost painfully aware was not the usual, actual, biological case). 

“No consequences,” he muttered to himself, glancing around a bit anxiously despite there being literally no one to actually hear him. The trashmouth could have been screaming anything he wanted without even a chance of  _ beep beep _ being tossed at him. He could do and say and be anything he wanted. No one would even know. Hand twisting, he pumped his fingers slowly in and out of Eddie’s body, gaze trailing up his back, drinking in the sight of him wriggling and twitching with every touch, face a serene mask of pleasure and calm. 

His other hand tugged at his belt, button and zipper falling away beneath fingers that were barely managing what he intended and yet succeeding all the same. Richie freed himself even as his jeans started slipping down his hips - just as likely to vanish as Eddie’s shirt had been - and tipped forward on his sneaker-clad toes to brush his own swollen head against the pink puckered core of Eddie’s ass. It was warm to the touch - to the hottest part of his own body - which was enough to have the brunet gasping. Already overwhelmed. 

“You’re so fucking hot, Eds,” Richie whispered, torn between a solid grip on narrow hips and the smooth caress of his palm against the untouched canvas that was Eddie’s back and shoulders (and butt). 

He waited, even as he bent forward to mouth at the ridges of spinal bumps, nibbling just enough to get hissed breaths and tense muscles, Richie waited for the  _ Don’t _ that almost always answered him, as guaranteed as an echo in a mountain valley. Glancing up, though, it took only a look at Eddie’s face to know it was the farthest thing from his mind. Richie couldn’t resist, then, the tip of his head up towards the others. Every single one of them met his gaze, staring at his face in expectation while Eddie lay below them all like a dinner table or a fire pit, the center of a circle that he was supposed to be a part of - a lone chain link open and unhooked from the rest - and Richie dropped his gaze again. 

With a press of his thumb, he watched the flared head of his own cock disappear into that peaches and cream body, tipped his hips forward as the shaft followed, stretching soft, slick skin around the almost-smooth surface. Eddie fell still for a moment, mouth opened around a wordless sound while his fingers curled around bent and crushed fronds. 

For a moment, Richie wasn’t sure if he could even feel anything. It was all imagined anyway, he couldn’t exactly be worried that some strange condition - paralysis, seizure, fainting spell - had overtaken him at this exact moment. As the lower curve of his not quite flat (thanks,  _ pizza _ ) belly bumped against the swell of Eddie’s pert little ass, he came to a stop, hands moving to palm the round, pale globes before he slid higher, up and down a bumpy spine only to rest in the bend where hips met waist. 

His movements were gradual, almost like he couldn’t make himself jump to it, or rush. Richie rocked more than anything, forward and back, hips rolling ever so slightly, until sensation began to trickle towards him,  _ into him _ . Imagined in its entirety, without even the benefit of a glance to give him an unconscious view of a face - or rather, a sight - that his mind couldn’t imagine on its own. Ben said there was no dreaming something you hadn’t seen before. 

Settling his grip, Richie surrendered to the stirring tease of Eddie’s wriggling, retreating just enough to watch his cock head re-inflate like a foam stress ball along the scarred edges of his circumcision before he sank back inside. 

That damn drum line became more pronounced as he set a pace, only to try and escape it, but there was no escaping. Richie still felt the sharp, laser-focused and yet utterly vacant gazes of the rest of the losers, watching him like he wanted them to in a way that suddenly felt a bit less like self satisfied accomplishment and a bit more like an obligation, expectation to be filled. Anticipation from an audience that he not only could see but couldn’t escape. An impatient glare that left his cheeks and shoulders hot in a way that moments reminiscent of waiting rooms at the dentist were not supposed to manage. 

A warmth had begun to suffuse him, anyway, which made it way easier to thrust the lot of them from his front and center most thoughts  _ and  _ thrust himself into Eddie. Forward and back, forward and back, like rowing a boat if his legs were the oars and each time he got to watch his cock disappear into that lithe little body, got to watch that body twitch and tense and writhe beneath his fingertips, trembling with exertion as narrow, long fingered hands sought purchase on anything stronger than the already crushed greenery around them. 

Awareness of the utter inconsequential meaninglessness of it all crashed down on him at the same moment as his climax. Richie tightened his grip into soft, warm hips only to find his aching, knobby knuckled digits curled mercilessly into his sheets instead. His sticky, damp, probably about to be stained sheets that clung to him as he tried to roll over before flopping helplessly onto his back. 

He may as well have been fucking a grapefruit, for all that it was  _ different  _ from his own hand. Images of the others’ eyes boring into him lingered a bit, flushing his skin hot with something like embarrassment - if you could order that with a side of sweet hot sauce - while he fell still, ears perked in search of any hint of whether or not he was alone in the room. 


End file.
